The answer comes back immediately: Yes. From Upgrade #3 of the Development Environment GeneXus 9.0 can be installed on Vista perfectly, and it thus can generate, compile and run without problems. Anyway, there are some considerations to be made.

By default, the new Windows Operating System restricts the rights of all the users, even the administrator groups. This new functionality, called UAC (User Account Control) allows checking one by one all the steps that the system will execute, by asking the user if they wish to do them. This makes a lot of executables bring up an alert requesting an authorization to follow or in some cases they trigger an error. This is the case when compiling with GeneXus: “CommError. The requested operation requires elevation”.

But this can be solved in at least two ways. One of the possibilities is modifying each executable file so that it runs as administrator. By clicking the right button of the mouse on the .exe file, you select Properties / Compatibility /  Run this program as an administrator. In our case they would be all the executable files involved, that is: GxComp.exe, gxexec.exe, VirtualDir.exe.

Another possibility is to disable the UAC from Control Panel / User Accounts / “Turn User Account Control on or off”. However, this is too risky, because UAC is Vista’s main tool concerning security.